Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is being removed from Steam on July 17 but that’s fine by me.

According to a Valve announcement, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD will be removed from the Steam service on July 17. The game was a remake using levels from the first two games and was developed by Robomodo, creator of the horrific Pro Skater 5. This is presumably due to music licenses expiring as was the case with Alan Wake earlier in the year.

The game will be on sale for 80% off until the day it leaves the service but I would strongly advise against buying it. This game was awful and a smear on the series’ legacy. Robomodo just do not know how to get the feel of Tony Hawk games right and it instead released a game with floaty, rigid and snappy controls that just feel terrible to play with. Even with new technology at their disposal they managed to make the physics feel worse than the original PSone games.

If you want to play Tony Hawk again I’d suggest sticking with the originals or if you can manage to track down a copy of Underground 2 on PC, there is a fantastic mod called THUG PRO which adds recreated levels from all the games and allows online multiplayer. It is absolutely fantastic and uses the engine from when the games still felt great. I really wish that Underground 2 was on Steam so that more people could access it but there are still some copies that you can purchase online. While I think that it isn’t being updated any more there was decent dedicated community there last year where I gave it a go and it was clearly made by people who get the series.